Tradition

Last night Ron and I attended dinner at his dean's house. Before we ate, the dean gave us a tour of the home. Ron joked that he had considered bringing his camera along for the evening, and now I wish he had just so I could put some pictures up here of a traditional Qatari home.

The dean is currently renting the house, and he and his wife are not Qatari. They're American. Just thought I should throw that out there for starters. Also, this home is small for a Qatari home. Got that? Small.

When you enter the gated walls, there's a small swimming pool on your left with a fountain in the center. Granted, it's not a giant pool meant for pool parties, but it's deep enough for diving, and who can resist that fountain, for crying out loud? The patio is big enough for any neighborhood get together you could possibly imagine, and it's nicely landscaped with palm trees and other "local" plants.

Marble steps take you into the marble-floored home. Ron and I both went in through the same entrance, but there are actually two entrances: one for the men and one for the women. Qatari gatherings separate the men from the women for the entire time. This allows the women to take off their abayas and just relax. There are also separate entrances into the kitchen for the same reason.

Make that separate entrances into the first kitchen. Despite the marble floors, this isn't a deluxe kitchen you would necessarily want in your own home, especially since the oven is in the other kitchen. Sure, it's a large kitchen with plenty of counter and cupboard space, but since this is a room meant "only" for the maid, it's by no means a fancy one.

Now onto the second kitchen, which you have to go outside to get to, though just a few steps away. This is where the cooking and baking is done so as not to heat up the rest of the house. And there's no dishwasher. That's what the maid is for. (I never said there was no well-defined class system here.) Also in this other mini-building is the laundry room.

In total, the house has 7 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms, as well as a double sink in an alcove on the first floor, meant to make washing for prayer time more convenient when the house is full.

Before returning to the dinner party, Ron asked the dean what was on the third floor. The dean said, "The roof. Don't you have marble steps leading to your roof at home?" A bit excessive, sure, but I also found it interesting because in traditional Arabic homes--back when "traditional" meant the animals slept inside with you and there wasn't even a word for "home" because "home" was not your house. You slept in your house, but you cooked, ate, worked, and socialized outside. And when the weather permitted or you had guests you couldn't accommodate inside, the roof was part of the house. That's where you would sleep. Sure, there were no walls, but it was every bit a part of your house as the inside was. As beautiful as the evenings here are, I can easily imagine climbing a ladder or marble stairs or whatever it takes to get to the roof and lie down to sleep.

I have to say that after an evening of shop talk, I think there's a lot to be said for separating the men from the women. There were four of us women there--including the dean's wife--who are "simply" the wives of staff and faculty members. One woman works full time for CMU-Qatar, so I'm not counting her. She understood and could participate in all the shop talk. But the rest of us? Not so much. I told Ron after we left that although I'm not at all offended, I'm noticing more and more how, at his work functions, no one ever asks the wife what she does. It seems even more pronounced here, where the assumption is easily made that if a family can uproot itself for four months (or three years or 20 years), then obviously the wife doesn't do anything but take care of the husband and kids, so what can you possibly want to know about her. Is it just me who finds other people interesting, regardless of their gender? I don't fault the hosts for this divide. They were quite nice and they couldn't be expected to direct all conversation. It's just a natural divide, I suppose, that the traditional Arabic culture has decided to allow to remain.

Happy birthdays and henna'd hair

Ron's 40th birthday is tomorrow. He's a handsome guy, and still will be when he hits 80. My favorite feature of his when we first met was his hair. It's dark and wavy and even before he became a professor, he looked like one, which, for some reason I'm not really interested in delving into, was sexy to me. Okay, wait. I'll delve, but only for a moment. It's because I had a crush on my 11th grade English teacher who had a Ph.D. So he was always my idea of what a professor was.

Back to Ron. I even wrote a silly poem to him for one of his birthdays, back before we had kids, about his hair. Silly as in I meant for it to be funny.

His hair is still dark and wavy, and long and slightly unkempt again, just like it was when we met. Only it's mixed with some grays now. And on him, it works.

I, on the other hand, have colored my hair for more than 10 years. My first gray popped up when I was 21, right smack dab on my 21st birthday, as a matter of fact. And it wasn't the last. Jane D back in Pittsburgh has gorgeous gray hair and a gorgeous complexion to match. Tired of coloring mine and tired of pumping it full of chemicals, I decided to let it grow out, see what kind of gray I could end up with. The result wasn't what I would call gorgeous. I figured, that's okay, I would just embrace the gray and my age and revel in what the years had taught me.

Turns out that what the years have taught me is that having a five-year-old point out how gray your hair is turning isn't necessarily all that embraceable. It's not vanity, it's . . . okay, it is vanity.

In an effort to convince myself I was coloring my hair to make it healthy looking again, I bought some henna. See, I believe I'm a natural redhead who accidentally ended up with light brown hair. There was just a mix-up somewhere along the way, and henna is the natural, healthy solution.

Only when you first color light brown (splashed with gray) hair with henna, it's not red. It's orange. Bright orange. Bright, flashing orange, as in the color of orange Listerine. I know because we had a bottle sitting on our sink when I was drying my hair. When Simon saw me he said, "Did you mean for your hair to be that color?"

So until my hair fades to a more acceptable shade of Thanksgiving Dinner Sweet Potato Pie, I've decided I may as well make the most of it. As I said, Ron's birthday is tomorrow. And I believe no 40th birthday party is complete without a hired clown. Besides, I could really use the cash to buy some head scarves. How convenient to know just the country where I can get them.

Happy Birthday, Ron! You'll always have better hair than me, but I promise to never resent you for it. I love you!

My favorite joke

Here it goes:

These three guys were out on a jungle safari when they were captured by a band of vicious cannibals.

"We will kill you, and then we will use your skin for our canoes," the leader of the cannibals said. "But we will let you decide how you will be killed."

The first of the three men stepped forward. "Viva la France!" he said. "Give me the guillotine!" So the cannibals built a guillotine, beheaded the man, and skinned him for their canoes.

The second man stepped forward. "Those poison darts always seemed like a pretty cool way to go. Give me one of those."

So, pfft, the cannibals shot him with the dart, waited for him to die, then skinned him for their canoes.

The third man stepped forward and said, "I would like a fork."

"A fork?" the cannibal chief asked.

"A fork," the captured man repeated. So the chief got him a fork and handed it over, then the entire troop watched to see what would happen.

The man held the fork in his hand. "I don't really care how you kill me. But you're not going to use my skin for one of your damn canoes," he said as he stabbed himself all over.

In order for the joke to be funny, however, you have to see it told. It just doesn't have the same effect written down. That's another version of a geographical joke: you have to be there.

Kinda like our experience here in Doha. I can write posts about it, and Ron can take pictures, but it's hard for me to really show what it means to be here. I think that's what life is about in general. I'm a writer and an editor and a compulsive reader, and I'm all about trying to capture life with words. But you can't. Not really, not completely, and sometimes not at all. That admission occasionally makes me a little sad, like "alone" is a pretty easy place to find yourself, especially in a land of abayas and black face scarves with slits for the eyes and a language that is beautiful but completely incomprehensible to me.

Usually, however, I think that beyond the words, our experiences are pretty universal. And maybe sometimes we need to stop trying to describe those experiences, and just accept that we all get the joke, whether we laugh at it or not.

And the beat goes on

10 Reasons why I'm feeling old today, or, at the very least, my age:

(1) It's easier for me to get up at 5:30 than it is for me to stay up until 10:00. Of course, I know this might be a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Speaking of which, I feel pretty confident that it was the chicken, because someone had to take care of that egg, the one that wakes up at 5:30, calling to you for orange juice, cereal, and cartoons. Now, if it's which woke up first, the chicken or the egg, I'm going with the egg. And here we are, come full circle, to the reason the chicken needs to go to bed before 10:00. Thus I have contradicted myself. The chicken wouldn't need to go to bed so early if it weren't for the existence of the early-rising egg. Not that I would ever exchange said egg for all the lazy mornings in the world.

(2) Phrases such as "which came first, the chicken or the egg" actually go through my mind, and, even worse, cause me some bit of thought.

(3) The most amount of brain effort I put in during a day is worrying about the answer to such age-old questions. Not sure whether that's age or the fact that I'm so sleep deprived. Either way, I can legitimately trace it back to not being 22 anymore.

(4) I realized the other day that I've been driving for 22 years now, which is more years than most of the drivers here in Doha have been alive.

(5) Qatar didn't even become an independent nation until I was 2 years old. I'm older than independence itself.

(6) The thought of being older than independence itself makes me think about one of my favorite movies, "1776," which isn't just a movie. It's a musical that has nothing to do with high school or Disney or anything resembling teen idols. And I find that knowledge oddly comforting.

(7) I use phrases such as "teen idol." And when I do, I think of "Tiger Beat" magazine . . . and Ralph Macchio and Scott Baio and other names I'm too embarrassed to repeat.

(8) Okay, I'm not too embarrassed. After all, if I can say those two, how much more embarrassing can it get? The fact is I can't remember any other names from that far back. And I was an avid "Tiger Beat" fan. I even had posters on my wall, for crying out loud.

(9) Just remembered one: Duran Duran. I know it's a group, but does it count? John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Roger Taylor, and Simon Le Bon. That was my first concert. Two women--friends of my family--volunteered to take me when they saw how badly I wanted to go. I was 14, and thought those women were so old. I've since done the math. They were the same age I am now.

(10) It's almost 9 p.m. and bleary eyes are taking over. And there it is, that segue I thought wouldn't show up. My 5-year-old daughter told me the other day that I had too much eyeshadow on. I don't know what's worse: the fact that my 5-year-old has an opinion on makeup (and thinks there's such a thing as too much). Or the fact that I listened to her and wiped some of it off without even looking in the mirror.

Inland Sea trip

Figuring we'd better get some tourist-type activities in before we leave, we took a trip to the Inland Sea this weekend. Since getting there on your own is a risky venture (no maps, some serious sand dunes, and no car insurance to pull you out of those sand dunes or, even worse, to tow your car after you flip it), the group we went with hired Arabian Adventures to drive us.

The sea, which amounts to an inlet naturally formed within rolling sand dunes, is only accessible through off-roading. Part of the trip's description was "dune bashing," which is just what it sounds like: Land Cruisers and their adrenaline-junkie drivers (uh, I mean that in the nicest possible way) took us over one steep dune after another, generally straight on, but often at an angle, which was borderline terrifying. Ron asked our driver at one point if he had ever flipped. When the guy said no, Ron said, "Would you tell us if you had?" The driver just laughed. He said he had been driving these dunes since he was 11, and since he was probably about 25, I was somewhat mollified. Somewhat.

The part of me that wasn't mollified was the part that knows how invincible 25-year-olds think they are, especially those with so much money that this is just something they do for fun. After we returned from the outing, someone told us about 2 men who did the dunes themselves--no professional drivers--and flipped their car. One was temporarily paralyzed but recovered. The other is a quadriplegic. Had I heard that story before going, I might not have paid all that money to have young men put our lives at risk--years of driving experience or not. I felt like we were in those SUV commercials where you read in fine print at the bottom of the screen, Professional drivers on a closed course. Don't try this yourself.

Once we got to the Inland Sea, we took about a half hour break to get out and look across to Saudi Arabia. Then we loaded up the cars again and the drivers took us to a camp on the Gulf about 15 minutes away where a barbecue was being prepared for us. The water was icy cold but crystal clear and beautiful. The kids had more fun sliding down the dunes than swimming, but at least Ivan was content to sit at the edge of the water and play with his bucket and shovel. The food was nothing remarkable, though not having to pack a lunch for the beach was pretty delicious in and of itself.

As we were packing up to leave, the guys running the camp had pop and rap music blaring from stereo speakers set up in a couple of the tents. A friend commented, "Hm. Kinda takes away from the authenticity of the moment." Which it did. That and the volleyball net.

This is where I admit a picture is worth a thousand words.

Cultural festival

Once a year, Doha has a cultural festival. And if it weren't for the fact that we have friends here who speak Arabic, I wouldn't have known a thing about it. All of the fliers about the festival, including the list of events, were in Arabic. Ron said perhaps that was a not-too-subtle hint about who was welcome at these events, but I'm a little slow on the uptake. (No comments, please.)

We met these friends of ours at an old village that is open only during this festival. They had to leave about 15 minutes into our visit because their son got sick. So we spent the next two hours leisurely strolling around the square. I don't know how authentic the place was, but it was fun to imagine we really had stepped back a whopping 70 years or so into Doha history. As I've mentioned before, the show of wealth you see here is a relatively new thing.

My favorite stop was the basket maker, primarily because the man was so friendly. He's from Bahrain and was only here for the week. He made the kids miniature camels and horses, rings and bracelets, and we bought several baskets from him.

The food was, for the most part, unexceptional. There's a dish the Qataris eat to break their fasts during Ramadan, and it was basically a creamy oatmeal with lots of olive oil on top. I could see how if you hadn't eaten all day it would be appealing, but the kids were just grossed out by it. They liked the plain chickpeas with hot sauce much better. We also had these little sandwich-pizza-like things that I'm not really sure how to describe: two pieces of flat bread with a meat filling, the whole of which is pressed up against the inside of a large clay oven. Okay, so I guess I do know how to describe it. Those were actually pretty tasty and cost less than $1 a piece.

Ron was a tad bored by the stage entertainment (I'm not talking about the girls dancing in this picture--they were unarguably adorable), although I enjoyed it. He took a picture, but since it was dark by then, the lighting wasn't great. So imagine this: two rows of about 12 men each lined up facing each other in thobes, curved knives in their hands. They danced for at least an hour like this, choreographed steps that kept them in one spot. Now and then a dancer would leave the line and dance in the middle, waving a sword around instead of the knife. Lots of smiling going on, so this wasn't an aggressive dance. And they sang the whole time, the same 6 or 8 stanzas over and over again, which is what led to Ron's boredom.

I'm not posting the last picture Ron took that night: Me carrying Ivan out screaming under my arm. He didn't want to leave the sand where he had been playing for the last hour or so. "Sand" is a generous word for the grit pit that was at the center of this village. And only my kids were the ones who were deluded enough to think this was a place to play. The Arab children knew better. If you couldn't spot us with our fair hair and eyes, you can certainly spot Westerners by the way their kids think any dirt is worthy of a sandcastle. I should be grateful for their creativity, but you haven't seen the grit . . . er, sand . . . piles throughout our villa.

I love the Netherlands!

I was backing out of the "parking lot" at my kids' school last week and brilliantly ran into someone's car. I broke the left taillight of our rental and the right headlight of her little, red Jeep. No excuse, just an explanation: I was distracted trying to listen to 4 children at once and wasn't used to anyone parking behind me there. I hung my head in shame while someone went to find the car's owner. A few minutes later, out came a smiling woman. "You hit my car?" she asked, with the same sort of tone you'd ask, "Would you like to meet for lunch sometime?" I kept apologizing and she kept saying, "No, no, no. This could have happened to me. It's okay. I'm sorry for you." (She's from the Netherlands, so you have to imagine our exchange with a Dutch accent.)

Here in Qatar, you have to call the police for any accident and file a report. Otherwise you won't be able to get your car fixed. No body shop will touch your car without that report. Even if you, say, scrape your car on the wall pulling into your garage (which I have not done), you need to go to the traffic department and file a report. So, needless to say but I'm saying it anyway (notice how people always do say what's needless to say?), the traffic office is a busy, busy place to be. Think the DMV in a foreign language and without lines.

That's where we ended up Monday morning. Thank heavens we didn't have to go it alone though. An Arabic man in Ron's department (whose sole job is to do things like this) went with us. We were in and out in half an hour. Had we gone without him, I would still be there now. The woman whose car I hit went with us so the officer could see her car, nod, and then charge me 100 QR for causing the accident and then 35 QR for stamps to go on some piece of paper that verified we had been to see him.

Today the poor woman had to go to our insurance office so someone there could assess the damage and decide which body shop she needs to go to. And in a few days, she has to take the car in for repair. We, on the other hand, don't have to fix our car. The rental company will after we leave (and bill our insurance, of course).

And all the while, she has just smiled and said, "No. It's fine. Everything is good." So I'm wondering now how to show my appreciation. My instinct is always to bake cookies because it's something I know how to do and because cookies make me happy, but I think that's probably an inadequate response to her graciousness. Flowers? Not quite right either. Gift certificate? May as well be cash. More profuse apologies? I'm already approaching groveling, embarrassing the both of us.

So I've decided on something else entirely: I'm going to learn, once and for all, where the heck the Netherlands are. I'm going to figure out the difference between the Dutch, Danish, and Finnish and what they all have to do with each other. And then, in the future, when people wonder aloud about these very things, I will be able to enlighten them.

My next step? World peace...